Construction of a system of canals in the first half of the 19th Century created the first large-scale demand for cement in this country. In 1818, a year after the Erie Canal was started, Canvass White, an engineer, discovered rock deposits in Madison County, NY, from which natural hydraulic cement could be made with little additional processing. He produced large amounts of this cement for use in the Erie Canal.

Other deposits were found, principally in the Rosendale district of New York, the Louisville district of Indiana and Kentucky, and the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. By 1899, nearly 10 million bbl. of natural cement was produced annually in the US and Canada.

Although portland cement had been gaining in popularity in Europe since 1850, it was not manufactured in the US until the 1870s. Probably the first plant to start production was that of David O. Saylor at Coplay, Pa. In 1871, Saylor tried his hand at selecting and mixing different kinds of rock from his quarries to produce portland cement.

After initial difficulties, he succeeded, and at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, samples of Saylor's product and that made by John K. Shinn at Wampum, Pa., compared favorably with the best-imported portland cements. While Saylor was perfecting his product in Pennsylvania, Thomas Millen and his two sons were experimenting with the manufacture of portland cement in South Bend, Ind. Their first portland cement was burned in a piece of sewer pipe (perhaps the first experimental rotary kiln used in America) and the resulting clinker was ground in a coffee mill.

A notable pioneer in the industry in America was Robert W. Lesley. In 1874, he founded the firm of Lesley & Trinkle, cement brokers, dealing in both natural and portland cements. This led to his entering the manufacturing business for himself in Egypt, Pa. From his previous sales contacts, he picked up some ideas for time-and-labor saving devices for manufacturing portland cement, most notable of which was a method for pressing the pulverized raw materials into "eggettes" for burning in the kiln.

In 1880, about 42,000 bbl. of portland cement was produced in the United States; a decade later, the amount had increased to 335,000 bbl. One factor in this tremendous increase was the development of the rotary kiln. In the early days, vertical stationary kilns were used and wastefully allowed to cool after each burning.

In 1885, an English engineer, F. Ransome, patented a slightly tilted horizontal kiln that could be rotated so that material moved gradually from one end to the other. Because this new type of kiln had much greater capacity and burned more thoroughly and uniformly, it rapidly displaced the older type.

Thomas A. Edison was a pioneer in the further development of the rotary kiln. In 1902, in his Edison Portland Cement Works in New Village, NJ, he introduced the first long kilns used in the industry-150 feet long in contrast to the customary 60 to 80 feet. Today, some kilns are more than 500 feet long. Parallel improvements in crushing and grinding equipment also influenced the rapid increase in production.